Some people come to Oslo to "see Norway", I usually tell people that they haven't really seen Norway if they have only seen Oslo. Although some Norwegians (and probably Bergen-people as well) considers that Bergen ought to be considered a separate nation from the rest of Norway, I think Bergen is more representative for "the real Norway" than Oslo ... but the rest of the west coast is even better.

An anecdote ... one friend of mine from school went to an insulated island at the very end of Sognefjorden. It was quite amazing, particularly with the public transport - first a big fast ferry from Bergen, it stopped mid-fjord so we could jump over to a smaller ferry, the smaller ferry finally came to the island, and there the bus was waiting for us, super-efficiently. Going back was less efficient, the smaller transport of course always had to wait for the bigger transport. I'd say that trust is a concept that's very strong in Norway. In this village on this island, people left the car key in the car and the house doors open. I did have some problems paying my ticket on the ferry, and it was no problem - I could pay the ferry ticket on arrival.

Language is another thing - we have many dialects in Norway. Apparently, the more weird and isolated dialects are slowly vanishing. I met with three generations on the island, it was the grandparents, the young parents and the young children. I couldn't understand a world of that the gransparents were saying! Their "Norwegian" was so far away from mine that it sounded mostly like gibberish to me. The parents, I could understand them clearly but their dialect was quite strange, like something I hadn't heard before. The children - they talked like they do in Bergen.